Everything She Ever Wanted (105 page)

Margureitte and there was no salutation.

I have been diagnosed as having 'Squamus' [sic] non small cell cancer

of the left lung.
 
It is inoperable, radiation therapy is complete.

The cancer still remains in part.
 
The long term prognosis is poor.

Therefore in the event of my death, it is my wish that our

granddaughter, Linda Susan Taylor Alford and her husband George Chester

(Bill) Alford, be refrained from attending any Funeral, Memorial or

other services for me.

They are also excluded from inheriting anything from my estate.

The two of them have caused great tragedy and hurt to so many people,

including their son Margureitte S. Radcliffe The letter was signed by a

notary public and with it came copies of three letters from her

attending physicians verifying that she did indeed have lung cancer.

Pat's and Debbie's arrests made news in Fulton County.
 
The Atlanta

_7ournal's headline read, TWO WOMEN CHARGED IN all SENIC POISONING

ATTEMPT, a startling, if slightly inaccurate, had been Pat Is poison of

choice in the heading.
 
Although arsenic past, the text of the article

pointed out that the only drug definitely tied to her in the current

case was Halcion.
 
In the Atlanta paper, the arrests were more

newsworthy for the prestige of the victims than of the accused; the

Crist name was revered in Atlanta.
 
But Pat was the focal point in the

Henry County paper: FULTON COUNTY CHARGES MCDONOUGH WOMAN WITH AT

TEMPTED MURDER.
 
She was the hometown angle.

All news coverage quoted D.A. Lewis Slaton as saying that the two women

were suspected of attempting to overdose Elizabeth Crist with Halcion

but were also under a continuing invest' ation into the possibility

that James Crist had died from a ig drug overdose.

Long before the story hit the media, the word came down in the Fulton

County District Attorney's Office that Pat Taylor Allanson and her

thirty-five-year-old daughter, Debbie, had been arrested.
 
Andy

Weathers hoped that he would catch the case.
 
It would be his second

meeting with Pat on the courtroom battlefield, and it would allow him

to pursue his own intense curiosity about Pat's involvement with the

murder of alter and Carolyn Allanson.

He had followed Don Stoop's relentless pursuit of Pat with avid

interest and had been pleased with his thoroughness.
 
Weathers had

unfinished business with Pat.

But it was not to be.
 
At least, Weathers was not to be the Fulton

County assistant D.A. who would prosecute in the continuing saga of Pat

Allanson; Fulton County assigned cases by computer, and the next name

up was Bill Akins.

Akins was an extremely handsome young lawyer in his late thirties; he

was a graduate of The Citadel and, like Don Stoop, had been in Junior

high when the earlier cases involving Pat Allanson took place.
 
He was

impressed by Stoop's investigation.

That single yellow sheet of paper from a legal pad had grown to a thick

file full of old police reports, new police reports, witness

statements, newspaper clippings, bizarre anecdotes, photographs, and

tape recordings.
 
Akins had never seen anything like it.

"Once I began to get a feel for this case," Akins said, "I realized

that, although it wasn't quite on the scale of the William Kennedy

Smith case.
 
. . . it was certainly a big case, possibly a

case-of-a-lifetime situation.
 
It's got everything; it's got the money,

the old cases, the murder.
 
'Sex, drugs, and rock and roll."
 
From a

prosecutor's point of view, it's got a 'splendid' history, a 'career'

kind of case.

It was tempting for Akins to take it and run with it.
 
If they went to

trial, he and everybody connected with the investigation would be

front-page news in Atlanta, the South, the eastern seaboard, and

possibly the whole country.
 
If still more indictments came down-the

first accusing Debbie and Pat of actually murdering Mr. Crist, and

others connecting Pat to the murders of Walter and Carolyn

Allanson-there wouldn't be a crime reporter in the country who wasn't

beating a path to Atlanta.
 
If they plea-bargained, no one outside

Atlanta would know about Pat's crimes.

"But, on the other hand," Akins recalled, "one; I am not a newshound

D.A. and don't feel that my ego should dictate what I do with the

case.

And two; the most important thing was to see that justice was served,

and headlines didn't matter."

Whichever way he decided to handle it, it wasn't going to be an easy

case.
 
Given the Crist family's understandable refusal to exhume their

husband and father's cremains for laboratory analysis, it would be

rough proving murder in that case.
 
Given the almost total

disappearance of their missing belongings, it was going to be

difficult-but not impossible-to prove the theft charges.
 
As for the

Allansons' murders, and the very real possibility that Pat had been

part of the very first spate of violence, should an indictment ever be

brought, that too would be a real squeaker.

Furthermore, Pat had retained an excellent attorney, Steve Roberts of

the firm of Garland and Samuel.
 
Roberts was asking for a speedy trial,

something any defense attorney has a right to do.

He could, legally, force Slaton's office to go into court within sixty

days.
 
A defense attorney could always drag his feet and ask for

delays-and most of them did-but a prosecutor had to be ready to go into

court within that sixty-day period.

If Akins asked for an indictment charging Pat with involvement in a

cover-up after the shootings of Walter and Carolyn Allanson, one of the

state's witnesses would have to be Edward T.

M. Garland, the same Ed Garland who had come to detest Pat's

machinations when he tried to defend Tom, the same Ed Garland who had

been the oh'ect of Pat's derision and scorn all through Tom's trial and

afterward.
 
And, of course, the same Edward T. M.

Garland who was a partner in the firm of her current defense

attorney.

That could create a very sticky situation.
 
Ed Garland testifying

against Pat would not be a happy thing for the defense, but it was a

gleeful prospect for Don Stoop and Michelle Berry.

They had listened to those tapes, the hours and hours of Pat slowly

barbecuing Tom on her emotional spit, when all the time she had known

she could have gotten him out years earlier if she had only listened to

Ed Garland.

It would be a difficult case to prosecute with only two months'

preparation time.
 
Conversely, the threat of being connected to the

death of her ex-husband's parents was the last thing Pat wanted.
 
For

the state, it meant tremendous leverage in eliciting a guilty plea.

For that, Akins was grateful to Stoop and Berry.
 
"I have to give an

enormous amount of credit to Don and Michelle for doing the

investigation which gave me the stickthe real big stick-to hold over

Pat's head-and also the carrot."

Pat didn't even want to be associated with the Allanson name.

One of Steve Roberts's first motions was to ask that thle charges

against her be in her present name: Patricia Taylor, not Patricia

Allanson.
 
She most certainly dreaded being charged in that longago

murder.
 
Akins figured she might very well choose to pleabargain rather

than risk the connection.
 
She might reach for the carrot of relative

anonymity and prison time to avoid an even greater danger.

Akins's posture was to be lenient with Debbie and to lean heavily on

Pat.
 
Debbie hadn't had any arrests since the morals charge years

earlier; she seemed to be a follower and not an instigator.
 
No, Pat

was the big fish, whose history showed her to be the dominant partner

in all her relationships.
 
But would she plead guilty to the seven

charges extant, even if it meant a hefty sentence, rather than risk the

publicity circus that would erupt if Akins moved to add charges of

murder and accessory to murder after the fact to Pat's grocery list of

felonies?

Don Stoop and Michelle Berry wanted to go for broke.
 
That was the way

they had always approached this case, working night and day to trace

all the raveled and far-flung ends of it.
 
They had relived the

terrible events of the spring of 1974 that had led to the murders of

Walter and Carolyn Allanson, revisited all the places where the smell

of blood seemed still to cling, and believed that Pat Allanson had been

right there in the thick of it all -not the shooter, but the prodder,

the manipulator, the liar.

The instigator.

They wanted to see all the dark corners of Pat's life illuminated.

They were detectives.
 
Akins was a prosecutor.
 
The relationship in any

county or state office is-and always has beenboth symbiotic and one of

natural enmity.
 
Investigators tread on shaky ground and take chances;

prosecutors like to know where they are and they lean toward

predictable odds.

Both want to win.
 
But it might be safe to say that detectives are more

philosophical about losing.

In the end, Bill Akins chose to accept a plea bargain.
 
Pat Taylor

would go to prison.
 
But she would never have to worry about facing

murder charges-at least not in any case up to June 1988.
 
There would

be no trial, speedy or otherwise.
 
There would be no blazing

headlines.

Don Stoop was livid.
 
He didn't give a hoot for headlines either, but

he was a hard-liner on justice.
 
He would remain furious for a very,

very long time.

"Bill Akins never should have plea-bargained.
 
And I'll never change my

mind about that."